Visit #4

They brought Lena to us first this morning. She could not care less that we were there. She just wanted to stack the blocks. Very determined. She seemed upset with us or something... I imagine because she had not seen us all weekend.



We can't blame her... mamas and papas should not just disappear for days at a time...

We had no idea where Ilya was. We could hear music down the hall. Then, Celia, Dana, Olivia, David, Carolyn, Kristopher, and Ilya all walked up the hall! There were some other kids too, too many to name. I think I identified all of the bigger kids... it was the littler ones that I could not see. Celia just marched in and waved to us... she is adorable. Dana and Olivia ran over to us and I gave Dana a hug before we had to say "paka" (bye). We also saw little Andrew from RR today. He seems to get upset easily. He and the little girl he was with were screaming! Then, they stopped, she tripped and started crying and he started crying again, even though he was fine.

We got Ilya from them, then they came down 5 minutes later and told us it was time for his lunch. This was 10am. They brought him back like 15 minutes later and then they came and took both Ilya and Lena. We were pretty sure that they were saying they'd bring them right back. And they did a few minutes later. This time, they both were very excited to see us. Much much better than before.

We got out the pen and paper today to write down what we thought was Lena's shoe size. It was a 26И. I don't think she wears a 9.5 in children's sizes, which is what the equivalent would be. I asked a friend before we left who told me that most kids around 3 years old wear about a 7. And I think Lena is a lot smaller than average! 


Anyways Lena stole the pen. Apparently she is a young artist! 


When Ilya came out, he just started building... he built this by himself... we helped him stack a few blocks, but he told us where he wanted them to go!


This is easily the best photo I've gotten of Ilya yet. Both Ilya and Lena really love it when their papa picks them up and tosses them around or plays airplane with them.


This is proof that Miss Lena loves it too... Lena's hands are much smaller than they look.


I also love this other one of Aaron and Lena. I told you how if Aaron pretends to be chasing her trying to get her, she runs right to me to hide. Well, if I play it with her, she runs right to Aaron!


Aaron also picked up both of them at once and ran around with them! They loved that!


Lena LOVES being upside down. It reminds me of a certain cousin of hers. She stayed like this for several minutes. She was also doing little sit ups like this.


You will think Lena is screaming for the first few seconds of this video. She's not. Those are squeals of delight. If you don't believe me, wait 'til you see what she does when he puts her down...


Ilya gets really wound up, like a typical boy... he just runs around and jumps and laughs. When he acts like that, Lena follows suit. I took this one to show you how silly they get, but I love the end of it. What they're saying sounds like "dadda" but it's not... anyone know what they're saying?